Major U.S. information technology company Google Inc. has apologized to users for poor Internet connectivity in Japan around noontime on Aug. 25, blaming erroneous operation of its communications equipment.

“We set wrong information for the network and, as a result, problems occurred. We modified the information to the correct one within eight minutes. We apologize for causing inconvenience and anxieties (among Internet users),” a Google spokesperson told The Asahi Shimbun on Aug. 26.

The spokesperson added that the company will make efforts to prevent a recurrence.

The troubles began at around 12:22 p.m. on Aug. 25. Subscribers of Japan’s largest Internet connection service, OCN, became unable to access the Internet. The service, provided by NTT Communications Corp., has about 7.67 million individuals and 480,000 organizations as its members.

From around 12:24 p.m. on the same day, Internet connection also became unstable for users of service provided by major communications company KDDI Corp.

In both of the two cases, Internet connectivity was restored to normal by 1 p.m. the same day.

However, poor connectivity continued for several hours for other services on the Internet. For example, online trading became impossible on the website of brokerage house Rakuten Securities Inc. from 12:30 p.m. through 3:50 p.m.

Flea market app Mercari suspended its service for about 90 minutes. Part of the services of communications app Line also became unstable for about 90 minutes.

According to investigations conducted by Internet service providers, information concerning Internet connection routes, which was delivered by Google, contained incorrect settings due to erroneous operations. That caused the poor connectivity.